Mother Knows Best
by hiddenhibernian
Summary: Draco finally brings a girlfriend home to meet his mother. Unfortunately, it's the wrong one. He probably should have remembered no one, not even the Dark Lord, ever got the better of Narcissa.


**This was originally written for the Interhouse Fest on Livejournal.** **Thanks ever so much to FreeBuckbeak for unpicking my dodgy grammar!**

* * *

 **Mother Knows Best**

 **-oOo-**

"You didn't like her." Draco brushed away some breadcrumbs from the formerly pristine tablecloth, but left the soup stain for the house-elves. A fitting memento of a wasted meal.

If there was a tinge of bitterness to his voice, he didn't think anyone could blame him. First, he had been reproached because he didn't bring anyone home. When he finally obliged his mother and produced a woman – and a Slytherin, no less – Narcissa's polite silence in the wake of her departure was as telling as any words could have been in informing her son he had fallen short of her expectations.

Again.

"I didn't really care for her." Narcissa sniffed delicately, and in one traitorous moment Draco wondered what it would be like to have parents who thought the sun shone out of your arse. Who, rather than trying to mould you into their image, just accepted who you were with a 'That's nice, dear'. Even when you brought home their worst nightmare, the last person they ever would have wanted for you.

But oh, no – he was a Malfoy. Peaceful acceptance did not form part of their modus operandi, whether in love or politics.

"Before you start listing her shortcomings, can I implore you to at least not expand on it in public? Even if our family has proven itself incapable of learning from past mistakes, I'd rather our enemies didn't know we have failed to move on from V-Voldemort's views on bloodlines." Draco threw back the last of his red wine, selected from his late father's extensive cellars to complement the steak, and hunted around for more.

"My father never had more than half a glass of wine at lunch time. I do wish –"

"Be careful what you wish for," Draco warned his mother. "Do you really want me to go to Azkaban for Muggle-baiting? Which took place after two bottles of port, if I recall correctly."

"It makes all the difference if it's consumed after dinner, dear – drinking during the day is frightfully common." Narcissa's face suddenly softened into a smile, a hundred little creases around her eyes adding ten years to her appearance and turning her into a different woman. "I'm joking, Draco. Do try to keep up. You're barking down the wrong tree."

"What do you mean?"

"You think I didn't like Tracey because she's Muggle-born."

"Yes." Of course he did, he just hadn't expected her to acknowledge it.

"No matter what the girl herself may believe, she's not."

"Really?" Draco asked. Mother could be incredibly annoying sometimes. "And how would you know?"

"I used to know her father. It's obvious once you put it together: her age, the colour of her skin, the fact that she came from nowhere but was sorted in Slytherin. Ralston was always sloppy at charms, but he did have a lot of fun in the Seventies. You might want to drop a word in her ear, in case she doesn't know she may have siblings. Ralston Anderson, he was called – a very charming man. Albeit flighty."

Draco had known Tracey's long-lost father had been a wizard, because Snape had taken care to drop a word in his ear their very first week at Hogwarts. Or he had thought he knew. With a jolt he realised Snape might very well have lied, or made it up, for Tracey's sake – being a known half-blood had no doubt made her life in Slytherin easier.

Even now, it was discombobulating to return to his memories of the past, seeing them through a different lens. All the certainties of his childhood had vanished with Voldemort, or before him, and left was a confused tangle of recollections that looked entirely different with the benefit of hindsight.

"Be that as it may," Draco continued, trying to pretend he hadn't lost his momentum, "you didn't like her." Half-blood still wasn't exactly the Sacred Twenty-Eight.

"No." Narcissa examined her silver fork for stains. "Do you think I should have sent this back? I don't think it's quite clean.

"May I enquire as to why?" Draco said through gritted teeth, appealing to Merlin for patience.

"You may."

Merlin was a useless wanker. "Why," he asked, "did you not like her?" He was proud to note his voice didn't waver once; he must have learnt something from Severus, at least.

"She's not right for you. And she was very stiff – she spoke more to the salad fork than she did to me."

Draco had a brief moment of guilt. He had spent weeks buttering Tracey up to get her to agree to come, dismissing her fear of 'poncy cutlery' as a poor excuse. Maybe she had been right when she said most people didn't have seven courses for their Sunday lunch (plus coffee, of course).

"Really, if she is the best you can do there is no wonder you're still single." Narcissa warmed to her theme, seemingly unaware she was playing with fire.

"Tracey," Draco said with conviction, "is a perfectly nice witch."

"Indeed. She would also be a terrible choice of partner for you, so I'm glad she was only pretending."

Well, that took the wind out of Draco's sails. Again. Maybe he should have stuck to drinking water. His lack of a reaction gave the game away, but Narcissa didn't even seem to wait for confirmation.

"I was in Slytherin two decades before you. You may do me the courtesy of assuming I'm aware when I'm being schemed against."

Did other people's mothers always seem to know everything? "Point taken." Draco was still irrationally annoyed to have been denied an opportunity to call her out on sticking to her old prejudices.

"Aghast as I am to find that my son has sunk to such depths rather than committing to a real relationship, it does reveal an opportunity."

"Do tell." Draco had decided he was going to lose whatever game Narcissa was playing anyway, so he may as well summon another bottle of wine from the cellar to soothe his nerves.

"I happen to know a rather lovely girl – woman, I mean. Although I am possibly biased, I do think you two would be very well suited."

"Are you offering to set me up?" If Draco had foreseen this train wreck coming, he would have found himself called away on urgent business this morning. In Outer Mongolia.

"Is that what they call it nowadays?" His mother's generation had seen a fair number of arranged marriages. Draco had never dared ask.

"Assuming you're going to arrange a meeting with this person, yes." Maybe they still had a bottle of his grandfather's port somewhere. At this point, wine didn't quite cut it anymore. Draco was the first to admit he hadn't exactly been a paragon of virtue as a teenager, but he had done his best to make up for it in the last two decades. He didn't quite think he deserved being reduced to having his mother manage his pathetic excuse for a love life.

Draco almost choked on his wine when he realised he had effectively ended up exactly like his uncle Alphard. Having his own wing of the Manor suddenly didn't seem to make as much difference as he had thought – he was still over thirty and living with his widowed mother.

"Don't look so downcast, darling. I promise you it won't be as bad as all that." Narcissa smiled brightly, sending Draco further into gloom.

* * *

Draco was there at the appointed time, wearing the prescribed Muggle suit and a red rose. He had taken care to obey his mother's instructions to the letter, no matter how embarrassing, to avoid the inevitable disaster being pinned on him.

"Excuse me, I'm supposed to meet someone here?" The voice was very familiar, other than the faux question mark at the end – usually such affectations annoyed Draco immensely, but when he turned around he forgave it instantly.

The other person was wearing a red rose, too, and she was Hermione Granger. They were clearly taking part in a farce, so normal service was temporarily suspended and he would not take issue with her sounding like a Californian teenager.

"What a charming surprise. Please tell me this is some sort of elaborate joke?" Draco looked at her expectantly, hoping the world would start making sense again.

"If that's the case, it's a joke on me as well. I don't think so, though." Granger pulled out a bar stool and sat down next to him, so he had to bend down to hear what she was saying above the noise of the bar on a busy Saturday night. "I assume you're here on your mother's suggestion?"

"That would indicate I had some choice in the matter." Draco decided that if he would have to shout to be heard, he may as well do it sitting down. "Yes, I am."

"Well, so am I. Unless she has a rather twisted sense of humour – you would know better than I – or has recently developed dementia, I'm pretty sure she meant for the two of us to meet."

Draco considered the prospect. It was true that Narcissa preferred a witty pun to elaborate practical jokes, but if she had done it on purpose...

"She hasn't, has she? Become very forgetful recently, I mean. Because if she has…" Hermione put a worried hand on his arm, and Draco emerged from his thoughts.

"No. She seems to have developed some selective amnesia about the past, but that's a different matter."

"Hey, are you D. Malfoy?" the barman asked, nodding to Draco's rose, abandoned on a soggy beermat next to the Guinness tap.

"Yes," he sighed. Apparently his notoriety had spread to Muggles now.

"Your ma asked me to give you this." The barman passed him a battered envelope, penetrated by a wet stain that smelled suspiciously like beer.

"Aren't you going to open it?" Hermione asked.

"I suppose I must," Draco mumbled, tearing the cheap stationery open to reveal a slip of reassuringly solid wizarding parchment inside.

 _My dearest son,_

 _It has been obvious to the meanest intelligence for these past few months that you are head over heels in love with the redoubtable Miss Granger from the Ministry. I can only assume you have refrained from acting on your sentiments due to fear of my reaction, and could think of no better way to put it to rest than provide you with the arrangements for your first 'date'. From everything you have been telling me about her, I have reason to believe she will not be adverse to your advances._

 _I do hope you have a pleasant time._

 _With all my love,_

 _Mother_

Unfortunately for Draco, his mother wasn't always right.

He hadn't even attempted to ask Hermione out. After years of working together he was pretty certain they were friends, but hoping for anything else seemed a fool's errand. Draco, with his long history of poorly thought-out choices, did anyway, but he hadn't put it to the test yet.

Instead, he had picked the slightly easier option of attempting to soften his mother's likely reaction of being introduced to his Muggle-born girlfriend. If he could ease Narcissa into the idea, she would be less likely to put Hermione off in case Draco ever did manage to persuade her to look at him with more than friendly interest.

Which had led him right into this mess.

Draco chanced a glance at Hermione, who almost certainly hadn't allowed her scruples to stand in the way of reading as much of his letter as she could. The corner of her mouth was quivering.

"It's fine, Granger. You can make fun of the fact that my own mother is so desperate she's resorting to setting me up." He didn't exactly have anything left to lose at this stage; being a laughingstock seemed the natural consequence.

"She's very efficient, you know. And she clearly has your best interests at heart." Hermione sounded amused – he wasn't sure if it was better or worse than outraged.

Draco looked despairingly at the taps in front of him with their strange names, like Heineken or Carlsberg. He knew better than assuming Muggles were inferior to wizards; surely they drank wine, too?

"I have to admit I didn't believe her when she told me I would be meeting the man of my dreams here tonight, but she may have been right about that, too," Hermione said. Draco turned around quickly to see if she was joking but she seemed entirely serious, if a little pink.

"I'd like to think I would have made the first move eventually, but seeing as we are here..." She motioned to the bar. "Would you like to have a drink with me?

For once, Fate seemed to have decided to give Draco a break. He ought to grab it with two hands, no questions asked, but he couldn't stop himself. "Do you really want to go out with me?" He cringed at the disbelief in his voice, but Hermione didn't seem to mind.

"Yes, I do. That's why I asked."

"Gryffindors," he mumbled under his breath, but no matter how much he tried to look indifferent, Draco couldn't stop himself from smiling like a loon.

Maybe his mother had been right about everything.

It was a terrifying prospect, but for the moment he couldn't find it in himself to care.

 **THE END**


End file.
